Member-only story
Why the Most Successful Startups are Built on Failure
In the glossy pages of business magazines and the polished pitches of startup founders, success is often portrayed as a linear, upward trajectory.
The narrative goes something like this: have a brilliant idea, execute flawlessly, scale rapidly, and ride off into the billion-dollar sunset.
But the reality of entrepreneurship is far messier and more complex.
For every overnight success story, there are countless tales of false starts, wrong turns, and outright failures…
…And yet, these failures are not the opposite of success — they are often the very foundation of it.
Some of the most iconic companies in the world were built on the ashes of early failures.
Before creating the iPhone, Apple had a long string of flops, from the Newton PDA to the Pippin gaming console.
Before revolutionizing the entertainment industry, Netflix started as a DVD-by-mail service that nearly went bankrupt competing with Blockbuster.
These stories are not the exception, but the rule.
